Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data.

[1][2] It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.[1] A statistician is someone who is particularly well versed in the ways of thinking necessary for the successful application of statistical analysis. Such people have often gained this experience through working in any of a wide number of fields. There is also a discipline called mathematical statistics that studies statistics mathematically. The word statistics, when referring to the scientific discipline, is singular, as in "Statistics is an art."[3] This should not be confused with the word statistic, referring to a quantity (such as mean or median) calculated from a set of data,[4] whose plural is statistics ("this statistic seems wrong" or "these statistics are misleading"). Some consider statistics to be a mathematical body of science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data,[5] while others consider it a branch of mathematics[6] concerned with collecting and interpreting data. Because of its empirical roots and its focus on applications, statistics is usually considered to be a distinct mathematical science rather than a branch of mathematics.[7][8] Statisticians improve the quality of data with the design of experiments and survey sampling. Statistics also provides tools for prediction and forecasting using data and statistical models. Statistics is applicable to a wide variety of academic disciplines, including natural and social sciences, government, and business. Statistical consultants are available to provide help for organizations and companies without direct access to expertise relevant to their particular problems. Statistical methods can be used to summarize or describe a collection of data; this is called descriptive statistics. This is useful in research, when communicating the results of experiments. In addition, patterns in the data may be modeled in a way that accounts for randomness and uncertainty in the observations, and are then used to draw inferences about the process or population being studied; this is called inferential statistics. Inference is a vital element of scientific advance, since it provides a prediction (based in data) for where a theory logically leads. To prove the guiding theory further, these predictions are tested as well, as part of the scientific method. If the inference holds true, then the descriptive statistics of the new data increase the soundness of that hypothesis. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (a.k.a., predictive statistics) together comprise applied statistics.[9] Statistics is closely related to probability theory, with which it is often grouped; the difference is roughly that in probability theory, one starts from the given parameters of a total population to deduce probabilities pertaining to samples, but statistical inference moves in the opposite direction, inductive inference from samples to the parameters of a larger or total population.